1200
HAWAIIAN ISLANDS.
there is no more monarchy and no more royalty, the country is better for it. Every boy who grows up will feel on an
equal footing with his neighbor. The royalists have prophesied that the Queen would be restored to her throne. The
throne was not hers, but lent her by the people, whose voice is as the voice of God, and when she violated the
conditions and abused her privileges the people had an inalienable right to take it away from her again. Many had
hoped that she had learned something from the example of Kalakaua and believed that she should have a fair chance.
The supreme court gave her a chance to choose her own cabinet, and everybody knows how she returned the
compliment in the constitution which .she didn't promulgate. While we decline to return in our steps, we must be
patient and considerate. The period is one of transition and trial, and the future will depend on our present conduct.
With an administration like the present we may be sure that what the government does will be for the best interest of
the country at large, and that their efforts will be finally crowned with success."
Walter G. Smith said : ''The 17th of January is a day which stands for a great deal that is inspiring in the political annals
of the world. It was upon that day, in 1793, that the people of France condemned to death a despotic king and made
liberty, which has been the dream of the philosopher, the possession of the subject. Then and there the republican
movement in Europe, in spite of precedents and older activities, really began its onward march. Up to that era most of
the people of the European mainland had been fixed in the belief that a state without a king and a church without a
bishop meant chaos and infidelity.
"The events which grouped about that January day brought them to their senses. The scales fell from their eyes when
the King's head fell into the basket, and they saw that the divinity which had seemed to hedge the despot had been but
a figment of their own superstitious and inherited fears. It was then that the feudal principle in the politics of the world
received a wound that was to defy all surgery. One hundred years after that great day in France came a day in Hawaii
when the last independent sovereign in the Western Hemisphere lost her throne and the last recognized dynasty oil this
side of the globe was expunged from the calendar of princes.
"Thereupon the 17th of January gained the right to be known as one of the world's democratic holidays. It is the day
from which an historical chapter in the contest of the subject against the crown, on both sides of the earth,
transpicuously dates. Let what the day has witnessed for France, for Hawaii, and for all men, approve the thought that
it is a sign set eternal in the heavens of futurity that kings and queens and potentates shall be no more, and that the reign
of the people has begun. My friends, it builds up a man's political constitution to be a citizen of Hawaii in such an era
as is now in the vigor and brightness of its prime. It is a privilege, so far as the principle is concerned, equal to that
enjoyed by the fortunate men, some of them your ancestors and mine, who did duty at Faneuil Hall or behind the
earthworks of Bunker Hill. I do not withdraw the comparison, because Hawaii in contrast with colonial America is so
small or because the forces with which you grappled beside those which stood for England, were so weak and
impotent; for it must ever be remembered that your defiance to the tottering Hawaiian monarchy lost no tone of
sternness or of courage when you stood at bay to the President of the United States and the power which he misused.
" There is nothing more inspiring in the annals of 1776 than the unwavering front which you preserved in your great
emergency. There, on the one side, was the chief of sixty millions; here was an armed body of a paltry thousand; there
was the strongest of modern powers, with its army and its fleets; here were a few lone rocks in the ocean -without a fort
upon its pinnacles and without a gun upon a deck; there was a great Government whose President had declared that our
dethroned Queen should reign again; here was a little band of men who said that she must pass over their dead bodies
first; there in our harbor were the broadsides of a possible foe; here on shore was a battalion behind its sandbags! The
odds were great, but the patriots of Hawaii took them; and if the American people, aroused by that spectacle, had not
placed themselves between us and all harm, I feel that here upon this soil would have been a new Thermopylae, not
less consecrated to human courage than was that which made immortal the memory of 300 Greeks, It is not enough,
fellow citizens, to look backward with pride, for we must look forward with courage. You destroyed a monarchy one
year ago to-day; what are we to have in place of it 2 year from to-day or ten years hence?
"The problem of January 17 was easy to solve beside the problems that may be in store; problems which will tax the
calmest statesmanship of the great man who is our President to-day; which will also tax the wisdom and experience of
his cabinet, the sagacity and patience of our councils. We have a party at home devoted to the lost cause and a
moneyed influence abroad conspiring for control. We are in the midst of alien races and more alien creeds. There is a
clamor of many tongues within our gates; the pressure of foreign governments at the outer walls. Our